From all angles: Vote '08
From humor columnists' double-takes to more serious editorial fare, here you'll find a wide-ranging collection of opinions on the 2008 elections season.
July 1, 2008
Jonah Goldberg: Can Obama rescue Bush?
Breaking news! The ultimate White House insider plans a tell-all book about the Bush years. Boasting unprecedented access to the president's thinking, it will run counter to almost everything we've been told about Bush's radical presidency.
June 30, 2008
Can California's same-sex marriages be saved?
We have all heard of May-December marriages, but in California these days, it's the status of a June-November marriage that is at issue.
June 26, 2008
Another wedge issue
There's a disturbing trend in this 2008 election. We are witnessing the manipulation and exploitation of Muslim-Jewish differences by political candidates in pursuit of votes. As advocates for our respective communities, we believe it's in America's interest that it stop.
June 22, 2008
The float vote
The british have a more sophisticated and accurate lexicon to describe their elections than we crass Americans do. U.S. politicians aggressively "run for election," while British candidates more calmly "stand for office." And what we call "swing voters," as though they swing back and forth between candidates like a rusty screen door in a midsummer storm, are more accurately defined by the British term "floating voters" because they gently float between candidates -- occasionally stopping at "undecided" to catch their political breath.
June 15, 2008
America isn't over
A few weeks ago, I went into a Barnes & Noble and noticed a prominent new display -- the "BRIC" table, piled high with books detailing the irresistible rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Nearby, another shelf sagged under the weight of more than half a dozen depressing new books about the failures of American foreign policy, each painting a more lurid picture than the last of the coming era of U.S. impotence.
June 8, 2008
What undid Hillary Clinton
On Wednesday afternoon, Hillary Rodham Clinton visited her Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters and disclosed that she would finally concede her long primary fight. That same afternoon, a fierce storm system developed over northern Virginia and unleashed a tempest of high winds, driving rain and even a tornado. The heavenly outburst was a fittingly symbolic expression of the anger and frustration that defined the last days of a candidate who once seemed to have a lock on the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
June 8, 2008
The price of our early primary
Tuesday's primary election cost the state and counties an estimated $100 million, and it produced the lowest turnout since records have been kept. Less than 25% of registered California voters bothered to vote, according to the secretary of state's office.
June 8, 2008
The 2nd District's second round
While Barack Obama was making history by claiming the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, Mark Ridley-Thomas was creating some historical ripples of his own in the 2nd District race to replace retiring Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke. In a surprise showing, the state senator outpolled the favored Bernard C. Parks, 45% to 40%, in Tuesday's primary and, in so doing, dealt at least a temporary setback to Los Angeles' traditional African American leadership. But 45% wasn't quite enough, and now the two are headed for a November runoff, where the dynamics of the presidential race ensure that anything can happen.
June 2, 2008
ENDORSEMENTS 2008
The winners should be...
Following are The Times' candidate and ballot measure endorsements in the June 3 primary. Full text of endorsements can be viewed at www.latimes.com/elections.
June 1, 2008
Indefensible spending
What should be the most important issue in this election is one that is rarely, if ever, addressed: Why is U.S. military spending at the highest point, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than at any time since the end of World War II? Why, without a sophisticated military opponent in sight, is the United States spending trillions of dollars on the development of high-tech weapons systems that lost their purpose with the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago?
June 1, 2008
The Obama-McCain age gap that matters
Call me squeamish, but I really wish I didn't know that John McCain recently suffered from an enlarged prostate. That, however, was merely one of the many bits of health trivia that emerged after the McCain campaign opened hundreds of pages of the candidate's medical records to a few select members of the media.
June 1, 2008
The Times recommends
With far fewer Californians expected to vote in Tuesday's election than did in the Feb. 5 presidential primaries, each person who votes packs proportionally greater clout.
May 27, 2008
DUST-UP
When the government wants your property
Today's question: Propositions 98 and 99 both claim to offer protection from eminent domain. Which one (if either) would be better for Californians? All week, California Republican Assembly President Mike Spence and Los Angeles County Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman debate the issues on the June 3 ballot.
May 27, 2008
BLOWBACK
Obama's delusional foreign policy
Reading J. Peter Scoblic's "Negotiation isn’t appeasement" reminded me of a seminar I took at San Diego State. The professor found my essay so compelling he gave me a big fat A. I wrote in my Bluebook final exam essay:
May 25, 2008
In Tom Bradley's shadow
The battle between City Councilman Bernard C. Parks and state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas to replace retiring Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke in the 2nd District in the south and central portions of Los Angeles County provides both a glimpse of where African American politics has been and where it's going in an era of increasing urban diversity.
May 25, 2008
Patching up the parties
Pundits seem to be converging on a new conventional wisdom: that the drawn-out and extraordinarily competitive Democratic presidential primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has cleaved the party in two.Many voters insist that they will not support any Democratic candidate in the general election except their original favorite, according to exit polls, and that has caused party elders to fret about whether the eventual nominee will be able to unify the party and defeat presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.
May 18, 2008
Democracy Inc.
In Thousand Oaks, the owner of a local chain of home improvement stores called Do It Centers is locked in fierce, expensive competition with Home Depot. But the contest has nothing to do with which can offer the lowest prices and the friendliest service, or which will sell you the better chain saw.
May 18, 2008
A campaign without the 'gotchas'
Is running for president fun? Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been doing it for the better part of two years now. John McCain, arguably, has been running since late 2004, when he decided to spurn John Kerry's advances and give George W. Bush that famously awkward hug.
March 31, 2008
Bare-knuckle politics
At any time other than in the midst of a heated electoral battle, it's hard to imagine that Nancy Pelosi would attract much controversy by opining that the Democratic Party's nominee for president should be the candidate who wins the most votes. The House speaker has done just that, last week drawing an angry backlash from wealthy supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
March 25, 2008
Jonah Goldberg: A race conversation? What are you talking about?
Thank God for Barack Obama. For until his "More Perfect Union" speech last Tuesday, it seems it never occurred to anyone that America needed to talk about race. "Maybe this'll be the beginning of a conversation," Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan proclaimed on "Meet the Press." According to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, just the fact of Obama's address proves that a "national dialogue on race" is "essential." The Chicago Tribune reported that "many voters, black and white, say they were moved by Obama's speech ... which they see as a long-awaited invitation to begin an honest, calm national dialogue about race." Newspaper editorial boards agree. In the words of the San Diego Union-Tribune: "Prodding Americans to confront their racial differences is, by itself, an accomplishment of historical proportions."
March 20, 2008
BLOWBACK
Obama blew it
Tim Rutten's column, "Obama's Lincoln moment" and The Times editorial, "Obama on race" both miss the mark.
March 8, 2008
Meghan Daum: Why we still need Clinton
Admit it, Obamaphiles, there was a part of you that was a teeny bit relieved about the outcome of Tuesday's primaries. As much as you think you want Hillary Rodham Clinton out of the picture so you can love your man with uninterrupted, full-time ardor, you're just not quite ready to cut Clinton loose. She's just too fundamental, too necessary, too much like a sofa you think you hate but, while attempting to move it through the doorway, realize is crucial to the look and feel of the room.
March 3, 2008
Gregory Rodriguez: Rally 'round the flag, Dems
If Barack Obama really wants to rise above the "old politics of division," he might want to start by putting that American flag pin back on his lapel and retracting his all too earnest explanation as to why he took it off in the first place.
March 1, 2008
Meghan Daum: Booming sense of pride
I'm not going to pretend I knew what Michelle Obama meant when, at a rally in Milwaukee, she said that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country." She later said she meant she was proud of people "rolling up their sleeves" and "trying to figure this out," which I take to mean she wasn't so sure either.
March 1, 2008
Tim Rutten: Deciphering the Catholic 'swing vote'
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisors have referred to next week's Texas and Ohio primaries as her campaign's "firewall" against Sen. Barack Obama's surging popularity. In both states, the New York senator's barrier is built on the same foundation -- the Catholic vote, and that fact has intriguing implications well beyond the primaries.
February 29, 2008
Joel Stein: A little something for the ladies
You know how ladies, when they don't get what they want, can go a little crazy? Am I right, fellas? Right now, they're pretty upset about losing their first chance at a female president. This would have empowered little girls, shattered sexist beliefs about female incompetence and forced men around the world to view a woman as an agent of power instead of a sex object -- all of which, it turns out, are important to women even though they buy Star magazine. Ladies are complicated.
February 23, 2008
Tim Rutten: Shoddy story, brilliant politics
This week's New York Times expose on Sen. John McCain's alleged relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist nearly a decade ago was a shabby piece of journalism.
February 22, 2008
Joel Stein: Too good to win
Imiss Hillary Clinton already. Not her creepy laugh, or the way she tried to bring back the pantsuit, or that point-clap-nod thing she does at rallies as if she's Chris Penn learning to dance in "Footloose."
February 19, 2008
Shame, Sen. McCain
One of John McCain's most admirable traits has been his eloquent opposition to the use of torture against suspected terrorists. During a Republican presidential debate last year in which other candidates tried to out-tough each other by endorsing "enhanced" interrogation methods, McCain recalled: "When I was in Vietnam, one of the things that sustained us as we went -- underwent torture ourselves -- is the knowledge that if we had our positions reversed and we were the captors, we would not impose that kind of treatment on them. It's not about the terrorists; it's about us."
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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